Slashdot Mirror
Seattle Minimum Wage Study Has Serious Flaws (washingtonpost.com)
"Remember the story from last week about how the new Seattle minimum wage law was hurting workers?" writes Slashdot reader PopeRatzo. "Well, it turns out that there are some problems with the study's methodology." The Washington Post reports:
First, their data exclude workers at businesses that have more than one location; in other words, while workers at a standalone mom-and-pop restaurant show up in their results, workers at Starbucks and McDonald's don't. Almost 40 percent of workers in Washington state work at multi-location businesses, and since Seattle's minimum wage increase has been larger at large businesses than at small ones -- right now, a worker at a company with more than 500 employees is guaranteed $13.50 an hour, while a worker at a company with fewer than 500 employees is guaranteed only $11 an hour -- these workers' exclusion from the study's results is an especially germane problem (note that low-wage workers in Seattle have had an incentive to switch from small firms to large firms since the minimum wage started rising).
In earlier work, in fact, the University of Washington team's results were different depending on whether these workers were included in their analysis; including them made the effects of the minimum wage look more positive. Second, the University of Washington team does not present enough data for us to assess the validity of its "synthetic control" in Washington -- that is, the set of areas to which they compare the results they observe in Seattle. The Seattle labor market is not necessarily comparable to other labor markets in the state, and given some of the researchers' implausible results, it's hard to believe the comparison group they chose is an appropriate one.
Suggesting Seattle's booming labor market may have skewed the study's results, two nonpartisan economists concluded it "suffers from a number of data and methodological problems that bias the study in the direction of finding job loss, even where there may have been no job loss at all." And the Washington Post also notes the researchers' findings are suspiciously "out of step with a large body of research," including another study from U.C. Berkeley researchers [PDF] which determined Seattle's wage increase "is having its intended effect."
In earlier work, in fact, the University of Washington team's results were different depending on whether these workers were included in their analysis; including them made the effects of the minimum wage look more positive. Second, the University of Washington team does not present enough data for us to assess the validity of its "synthetic control" in Washington -- that is, the set of areas to which they compare the results they observe in Seattle. The Seattle labor market is not necessarily comparable to other labor markets in the state, and given some of the researchers' implausible results, it's hard to believe the comparison group they chose is an appropriate one.
Suggesting Seattle's booming labor market may have skewed the study's results, two nonpartisan economists concluded it "suffers from a number of data and methodological problems that bias the study in the direction of finding job loss, even where there may have been no job loss at all." And the Washington Post also notes the researchers' findings are suspiciously "out of step with a large body of research," including another study from U.C. Berkeley researchers [PDF] which determined Seattle's wage increase "is having its intended effect."
Even if the study has flaws, it makes sense in economic theory. In the labor market, workers provide the supply and businesses provide the demand. Imposing a minimum wage that's greater than what results from an efficient market should result in higher pay but fewer workers. This is taught in introductory economics courses and makes intuitive sense that increasing the cost of labor will result in fewer people being employed. Just because a study is flawed doesn't mean the conclusions are incorrect.
You shouldn't mandate free market principles, otherwise the market is no longer free. Why don't we just mandate minimum $150 / hr? Mansions for everyone, whee!!!!
Is for suckers.
I don't any opinion of minimum wave because I chose not to work.
Are we supposed to trust Washington Compost now?
This new story is nothing but a bunch of liberals saying "oh crap! Our policy went bad! Let's quickly discredit the story revealing our blunder!!" When will someone try to poke holes in Obama era policies with the same fervor?
>And the Washington Post also notes the researchers findings are suspiciously "out of step with a large body of research
As in, "the large body of research" where 79% of economists agree that "a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers"? This is undergrad economics at any college worth its salt.
poofta bitch fuck cunt
Who buys your shit ?
If you don't pay the workers, they won't buy and sales tank anyway, followed by the overall economy.
As with code "smells", the response to the Seattle study suffers from study "smells."
It seems the people want a certain outcome, namely, that increasing the minimum wage puts more money in the pockets of working persons trying to get by. I mean, who can be against that apart from some mean-spirited Conservatives and clueless Libertarians, no?
But isn't science supposed to be about where the data lead instead about what we want the outcome to be? This study isn't what we want to hear so oh noes, the study has flaws and it doesn't agree with all of those other studies.
I am sure this study has flaws along with every other data-collection and interpretation effort in the social sciences. My concern is with the confirmation-bias-y tone of the parent post, like the Wild West prospector who sees a few yellow sparkles and starts hopping up in down, "There's goooolllld in them thar heels!"
Statistics! You can lie with it, bitches!
You have to explain to journalists at the WaPo that "Maybe hurting some hourly workers", and "Some companies maybe cutting hours" meant that it didn't include all businesses such as McDonalds and Starbucks who play by a special and exclusive set of rules. They are part of that "elite" and "special" group and comparing them to smaller mom and pop businesses is like comparing apples and oranges.
The real story on this should be about how USA Today failed to make the bias known to readers. But then we wouldn't be feeding those snarky know-it-alls at the Washington Post now would we?
If it's better when you include min wage at $13 than if you just have min wage at $11, that proves that the $13 min wage is better than $11 for the health of the economy. Maybe they need to make the min wage $13 for small businesses and $15 for large businesses, so they can see if $15 is better still. And if it is, move them both up until it looks like there's no difference in outcomes. Then you'll know the best level to have the min wage at, right?
Since large businesses have more reason to avoid taxes via shady means, the difference between the min wage for small businesses and large businesses should remain, as this is one way to level the playing field of unvoidable costs.
Remember, a mom-and-pop business may be able to use the same tax loopholes, but paying an accountant to use it may not pay back enough to pay the accountant for the time taken to do it, but while the benefit to using the loophole increases with increasing taxed income, the cost of using that loophole remains the same.
And he should be dropped out of a helicopter.
Looks like there are a lot more of them in the comment section. This should result in a major boom in helicopter fuel companies.
The progressive project is spinning at high rpm covering up reality.
The free markets don't consider what's right. There is a surplus of low skilled labor. And many many folks are desperate enough to work at just about any pay.
Is it right to pay them as little as possible? Even if a business is more than profitable enough to pay a significantly higher wage?
Here's another way free markets are flawed: Toothbrushes. Every dentist on this planet says use a soft or now ultra-soft toothbrush but you'll see medium and firm in the stores. People shouldn't use those but folks buy them so manufactures make them. Yet another example on how the free markets are wrong.
We also need to get over our brainwashing that we exist to serve the economy. An economy is supposed to benefit people. And as we see, free market capitalism is broken - well, it's a primitive economic system that a small minority benefits wildly from and use their economic and political power to force the rest of us to stay in it.
I'm gonna stop now because I'm thinking of growing a beard, wearing a beret and camo and hiding out in the state forest.
When the debate comes up over jobs gained/lost I find it useful to look at other regions that have done similar hikes in minimum wage. For example, Canada (especially eastern Canada) has been increasing min wage fairly quickly over the past ten years or so. After a fairly level wage (around $5-$6/hour) for a long time, wages suddenly started going up by around $0.50/year. In other words, in ten years wages went up over $5/hour.
The net result, apart from a small dip during the 2007-2008 financial crises, has been that the employment rate is better now than it was ten years ago. There are fewer people on unemployment and people who previously moved away to find work are now starting to move back into the area as the economy is doing better.
It's hard to buy the whole "raises wages costs jobs" argument when the evidence is to the contrary.
Ok: replace "workers" with "local business" or "local business workers"
Better now?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Do Starbucks baristas make $150K/year in San Francisco? Is minimum wage like $70/hour in California? Just curious how we've magically solved the minimum wage problem elsewhere, especially as we hear of all those poor developers practically living in poverty making six figures in the bay area.
Guess I didn't realize we moved all of the minimum wage jobs in America to Seattle.
So reading between the lines, the study's results were largely correct when talking about small businesses, higher minimum wage hurts small business. But it doesn't matter, according to these idiots because McDonalds isn't affected by it as much as true small businesses. Since when are we vouching for McDonalds and Wal-Mart as good corporate citizens?
You can't lump in McD and Starbucks because even though they do employ minimum wage, they will employ minimum wage regardless of the cost. They are large enough enterprises with high enough profit margins to absorb these costs and in the process drive out any competition from small business, which is exactly what McD and Walmart do when they're coming to a new market anyway, they operate at a loss until all the competition has starved out.
I'm surprised actually that McD, Starbucks and Walmart don't actively drive minimum wages up just so they can completely drive out every other local business. If I were an 'evil CEO', I'd do that and then when I have 90% of a market, I'd lobby to get it reduced again or even just to get my company excluded.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It's what everybody does lately. If you like the minimum wage you'll find a way to trash the original analysis. If you agree that the wage increase depresses hours, jobs and overall pay then you will dismiss any criticism of the original report. In the end, what matters is what employers actually do. The workers will speak up on their own if it's bad or good. Spin or bias is not going to convince people that their paystub says something different than it actually is (and that it's gone up or down as a result of the new policy)
I would imagine that in certain niches or scenarios that minimum wage can cause harm. The exception is not the rule though. The overall good it does should exceed all of the bad. Where there can be exceptions made to move towards the best of both worlds care needs to be taken.
The UW paper says it excludes multi-site business AND CLAIMS that the ommission likely biases the result towards zero.
i.e. they're claiming that the data they excluded would make the result even worse.
How could they make such an assumption to justify the exclusion of multi-site businesses?
Let's try a common sense test on it: Hypothesis: McDonalds sacks workers when the minimum wage rises. Likely false, McDonalds hires only the minimum number of workers to serve its business, to sack workers it would need to have a drop in sales, which isn't shown. Multi-site businesses are likely to be more professional, and carry less overhead labor and thus have fewer workers to sack or put on shorter time contracts.
I then dig up this sponsor group, find its a conservative think tank... oh WTF.
It doesn't mean the Berkerly paper is correct, only that the UW paper has a bias written right into it for me to see through.
First off, if we accept the premise that workers escaped low-wage employers and migrated to larger employers, are we to believe that this was never the case before, that larger employers didn't always offer better pay and benefits packages than smaller employers?
Second, we are expected to believe that increasing the cost of labor in no way encouraged employers to reconsider and possibly cut back on the number of workers they hire and the number of hours they work? A slightly higher wage coupled with fewer hours of work per week leads workers not to enjoy more money in their pocket and increased leisure time, it instead motivates them to seek out additional work to make up for smaller take-home paychecks.
But hey, who knows - in San Francisco restaurants are closing due to increased wages for workers. Granted they are lower-reviewed restaurants, but that doesn't lessen the sting for the terminated employee or former employer when their 3/4 star Yelp-rated restaurant closes.
Ken
Otherwise the conclusion is flawed, even if by accident it comes to the real conclusion
And how does removing 40% of an entire class of min wage make the 60% included "the data"???? IT'S ONLY 60% OF THE FUCKING DATA!
Statistics also requires you correct for confounding factors but ONLY if you know what confounding factors you know and can demonstrate affect the conclusions. So, no, you don't just keep adding more and more "corrections" until you get the "right result", then stop. You only add the corrections that change the conclusion or could do so, and you keep going as long as you find corrections that do this exist.
I doubt the majority of Starbucks, McDonalds, and WalMart employees are paid the minimum wage. In my experience (observational, not personal) they tend to offer better than minimum wage to attract employees that can function at a higher-than-minimum level.
Ken
1. Your blogspot.de cites a claim that he doesn't attempt to justify from a textbook that is a broken link.
2. The claim, isn't the claim being researched here. Namely does the minimum wage actually DECREASE the overall wages of workers. UW says "yes", Berkeley says "No". Whether it decreases UNSKILLED/YOUNG is a different question. It can INCREASE the overall wages while DECREASING the employment for young and unskilled workers.
A simply logic test of the UW claim:
If you had a mom-pop single site operation, and it had to increase wages, would it likely have slack employees it could reduce the hours of to compensate... likely yes by common sense. i.e. supports UW claims.
If you had a large multi-site operation, e.g. Lowes or Ford or whatever, would they have slack employees they could reduce the hours/sack to compensate AS MUCH AS the mom-pop operations? Obviously the answer is no, they would be able to run a tighter ship by virtue of being a larger operation, less slack in the employement. Scale.
So does omitting bigger multi-site operations bias the UW study? Well yes, common sense test says yes, of course, the fuck it does. So why did they omit it? Simple question, why omit multi-site companies. Also why omit those companies and then claim that those companies would show a more pronounced effect, against common sense.
Not only do we pay a living wage, BUT... we also use Fresh, Grade A Eggs, cracked at the moment you order an Egg McMuffin.
Now what makes an Egg McMuffin so yummy in the tummy?
Is it the delicious cheese? The egg itself? The Canadian bacon (or optionally, the sausage patty)? Or is it the English Muffin?
Maybe this is just a case of the sum of the parts equally something greater than each individual item. And likewise, we value each and every one of our employees, because without them, we wouldn't be what we are today. :)
If you are an American patriot that loves his or her country, buy an Egg McMuffin today, and support your local workers. American dollars, for American Egg McMuffins. MAGA.
I'm surprised actually that McD, Starbucks and Walmart don't actively drive minimum wages up just so they can completely drive out every other local business. If I were an 'evil CEO', I'd do that and then when I have 90% of a market, I'd lobby to get it reduced again or even just to get my company excluded.
Because it's easier and more efficient to kill local businesses by simply leveraging your size to charge less, even to the point where your store is losing money since you can afford losses at one store when you have hundred of other stores. Then, once local competition has been driven out, you raise prices. If you want to kill a business you go after their customers, not their employees. Plus, this way you don't have to deal with the mess of raising, then trying to lower the minimum wage (good luck getting a minimum wage reduced).
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Yeah, damn Liberals always dismissing and ignoring studies that don't fit into their world view!
Things that are wrong often make sense. There's a word for it now, truthiness.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You're right, they don't pay minimum wage. They usually pay $2-4/hr more then the minimum wage, it's the small business owners like mom n' pop restaurants, gas bars, small hobbyist stores, convenience stores that pay right at the minimum wage because their monthly profits are just enough for the owner to make ends meet if they're lucky(and providing they're not the ones who are there for 15hrs/day anyway). Strange thing though, every time these bumps in the min. wage happen those big name stores also stop hiring full-time workers, and rely more heavily on part-time. That's the case going on here in Ontario as well, which has had 2 big bumps in the min. wage and the same government just pushed through a $15/hr min. wage.
People who would have worked their way through the layers from PT to FT to management will never get there now, and there's far greater chance that their job will simply be automated out of existence. That's what the Mc'D's in Ontario are planning, and Wendy's and Burger King and Tim Horton's are now looking to do. Places that are unionized like Zeher's are also increasing self-checkouts, more automation, the bottom of the barrel stores like Food Basics or NoFrills are pushing more automation more self-checkouts as well. All those people are going to end up jobless, and the best estimation is talking 25-43% unemployment for this province. How the fuck is that not going to cause mass social unrest?
Om, nomnomnom...
Forgive me if I sound naive here... but raising the minimum wage will inevitably raise prices for businesses to stay alive (or reap the same profit), no? So the minimum wage will have to go up so people can afford the higher prices, no? Then the prices will go up... rinse and repeat.
I don't mean to sound negative, but I fail to understand how this helps over the long-run. Short term it sounds great, but it will drive up the prices (or cut labor) and ultimately hurt the people who can no longer work and rely on social security, etc. Think elderly and retirees.
It's all relative, so it sounds great to be making more money, but it won't buy as much. We'll see how this shakes out over the next couple of years.
There are millions of folks who have to take these min wage jobs - they have no choice. Aid from the state is a joke and not available in many cases.
And there are folks who can't even get those min wage jobs for various reasons.
We have a serious structural problem in this country and an under class that isn't even counted - The official employment stats don't track them. . They are swept under the rug and we tell ourselves how they are just lazy or somehow defective.
And resentment is building. The have-nots are getting less of the pie, their numbers are increasing and we are going to see more social unrest.
Right now, we're all being distracted by the us vs. them; conservative vs. liberal; Republican vs. Democrat but when folks realize how they are being shafted - how the owner class is getting all the rewards of globalization and automation - while the rest of us are dealing with ever increasing healthcare and lack of opportunities - we are gonna see 1930s type of unrest.
Our collective delusion is wearing off - at least for the under classes. You think overall prosperity will go down with higher min wages? Wait till the riots and protests really start going. What happened a couple of years ago with the Google employee buses is gonna happen more frequently.
That is from various polls from non cited source in a text book (" I include a table of propositions to which most economists subscribe, based on various polls of the profession") and limiting the scope of the proposition in the poll on young people is suspicious. What is the overall effect for example is not cited. And frnakly polls are useless they only represent what people EXPECT, they do not represent what study finds.
Call me crazy but I am untrusting your blogspot source about polls, and expect peer reviewed litterature, just for the reason that at least peer review and publishing allow to uncover the flaw cited in the summary.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They need a higher wages too. Worst case they spend it... OMG, it helps businesses.
Because even though trickle down policies don't make sense even from a logical perspective and which have been consistently found to be useless over the past decades, the owners and robber barons still beat that drum. It's like 10,000 scientists saying "climate change is real and caused by humans", but when one guy says "I don't buy it" suddenly the politicians have turned that into "there is no consensus on climate change"
BTW the "logical perspective" I mention means the fact that employers don't hire employees because they're making more profits, they hire them when the output of their current employees is less than the demand for their product. Additionally, someone who is already well off doesn't necessarily start spending more money when you give him a tax break, he's just as, if not more so, likely to just "bank" that money somehow.
If you want to stimulate an economy, the absolute best way is to put more money in the hands of the lower income because they spend every penny they make.
How is the UW study to be considered flawed for excluding multi-site businesses while the UCB study ONLY looks at restaurants, where in many of which, minimum wage doesn't even apply?
>This is taught in introductory economics courses Had you continued past 'introductory economics' you would have learned that most of what you learned isn't how world works in practice. Supply and demand regularly fails and rational actors generally are not. Empirical evidence is what to believe, not theory, and not 'what sounds intuitive'.
mass social unrest
You're looking at this from the perspective that the same people fighting for ridiculously high minimum wages DON'T want to cause social unrest. They absolutely want that. That's why it's important to keep in mind that you always do the opposite of what these nutjobs propose.
It's not 1:1. The labor cost is only a fraction of the price. Yes, raising the wages raises the prices, but not as much. Also not everyone is on minimum wage. The people earning much more will not be hard pressed to pay the higher prices. Prices would have to get a lot higher to impact high wage earners. The key is to gradually increase the wages... prices will gradually increase to compensate... but at a fraction of the wage rate.
Whether it creates an economic deadweight as you put it, depends on whether the people getting the money can productively use it.
Is $100 in McDonalds corp's coffers likely to be used better than $100 in their employees pockets? McDonalds can give it to shareholders.
So is that money in those shareholders pockets more productive or less productive to the US economy? The employee in Seatlle must be American, the shareholder does not need to be.... strike one. Even if a USA investor, they will be richer, more able to take foreign holidays and buy expensive imports, strike 2. Rich people find it difficult to place money productively, poor people find it far easier. stike 3.
You can't simply assume the money is better off in the hands of investors vs employees, because the job loss you cite hasn't happened in most of these minimum wage economies.
So UW here are wrong to simply assume multi-site companies would prove their case more, THEY NEED TO DO THE RESEARCH, not simply produce a paper to parrot their existing view. It's sloppy.
Hold up a minute. If the smaller business is allowed to employ people at a lower minimum wage than the larger business (and remembering here we're talking in both cases about a wage above the unregulated market wage for that job) then the smaller business has gained a competitive advantage relative to the larger business, compared with the prior situation.
So you'd expect the larger businesses to be contracting, and the smaller businesses to be expanding.
If the study shows that the smaller businesses are actually contracting, that means the damage in absolute terms to those businesses is greater than the benefit from being able to steal a march on their larger competitors. But that doesn't mean they aren't winning some trade away from the larger businesses, just that it's not enough to fully cancel out the damaging effect.
Not covering the larger businesses is a limitation of the study. But far from proving - or even suggesting - that they've expanded by an equal or greater degree to the contraction by SMEs, actually we can guess that the contraction there is EVEN WORSE. (Note here that we're talking about contraction in employment: it's possible the larger corps limited the damage to their profits by contracting employment even more sharply, e.g. the robo-servers we see taking orders in McDonalds).
Bottom-line: OK, that study had limitations. What study doesn't? But don't be too quick to say that implies the opposite of the study's conclusions: it might be even worse than you think.
Mom and Pop places are not required to pay the new minimum wage in Seattle. That is the problem with the study. It doesn't include employees actually making the new minimum wage. Seriously, SlashDot used to be a place for intelligent discussion.
once more into the breach
"a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers"
Then, logically, lowering the minimum wage increases unemployment among older and skilled workers.
I'd imagine if the minimum is 15, you're going to hire on experience, but if it's 7 employers start to worry about retention and won't hire someone overqualified.
So reading between the lines, the study's results were largely correct when talking about small businesses, higher minimum wage hurts small business.
Nope. You're ignoring the effect of the different minimum wage for "mom and pop" businesses and larger businesses.
Pretend you're going work at a cheap restaurant. Your choice is $13/hr at a restaurant with one location, or $15/hr at a restaurant with multiple locations. You'd tend to choose the latter option, right?
It turns out, so would a lot of other people. So now the small business is dealing with a crappier, less-productive pool of workers because all the "good" ones are working for the large companies.
It's not that minimum wage hurts small business. A lower minimum wage causes labor to go to where they get paid more for the same work. And supply-and-demand results in lower productivity and lower quality workers when you're paying less than the other employers.
Correct, there probably was "no job loss at all", because Seattle's booming labor market would have skewed the results by compensating for job losses with unrelated job gains.
When you replace a $8/h worker with a $15/h worker, there is no "job loss" as far as the business is concerned, but the $8/h worker is still out of a job. That was the original intention of minimum wage laws in the US, after all: to replace cheap, non-union "colored" workers with more expensive white union workers.
Spread that around and boom! Everyone's rich!
Ontario has healthcare for all. Usa has jail / prison healthcare for all for the stuff that the er does not cover.
You have written perhaps the most idiotic thing on slash dot. Even the cult freaks have a much more logical understanding than you do. The labor supply is capped, but it certainly isn't fixed. Ev if we didn't have generous welfare benefits for hood rats, there would be many valuable people with options to leave the workforce. In fact, as the airline pilot shortage demonstrates, there are tens of thousands of eligible pilots who are unwilling to work 15 days a week for a 6 digit salary. They're much happier volunteering at the VFW and drinking beer. There are hundreds of thousands of people,who are highly skilled programmers who are comfortably retired. There are, at last count, 4-5,000 doctors with a current license but deliberately working less than full time because they don't want to work. No, shithead, the labor supply isn't fixed. It's very flexible.
The only serious flaw is that it goes against the liberal democrat orthodoxy that the minimum wage has no effect on jobs.
What they're saying in the 'revision' is "the minimum wage is destroying small businesses and enhancing chain stores." Is that really what liberals want, the destruction of small mom & pop stores and total corporate dominance of retail?
I've been curious why we are only pushing for a $15 minimum wage anyway? $15 is still not a "livable" wage by any stretch of the imagination. However, $100,000/year ($50/hr) would make a comfortable living almost anywhere, and can be adjusted upward for local economics easily enough.
So, why not a $50/hr minimum wage? Seems reasonable to me... what am I missing here?
I like how they point out the findings are "out of step with a large body of research." This is the first and only practical research of it's kind. Everything else is theory and guess work. You literally can't be "out of step with a large body of research" because this is, quite literally, THE research to date.
We're talking people here. Not a fungible commodity.
Looking at comments like yours - you don't know how lucky you are. You had parents who gave you the mental capacity to work in a cushy white collar environment. A job where you can take time off to go to the dentist - and even afford a dentist.
You had opportunities handed to you that you are not even aware of.
We talking about people who work just as hard - if not harder than you - who would love to have your opportunities.
I'm sure you think you "worked hard" for everything you have and no one "gave you anything".
But the fact of the matter is you are a member of the lucky sperm club.
And just remember - look around you - that can disappear in a heart beat. I've seen it happen in 2000 and again in 2008.
So, it is worse than the original study ... it provides a disadvantage to mom and pop shops in favor of the stamped in the same mold chain stores. This would seem to be inline with the Seattle concept where coffee shops became like McDonalds via Starbucks, where literally there is one within a block in most cases, and the occasionally they appear across the street from one another. But it means places like the late Hurricane (removal of a landmark late night spot, that fell to Amazon's downtown campus) would have likely been victim to people leaving and going to a slightly higher paying job at a chain. So the local color will fade and the Borg win. Unintended consequences.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Economics is not subject to partisanship, but rather economic "laws," how things are and operate in a world of scarcity; from which one can draw conclusions on how their political agendas are likely to function in relation to their desired ends. That is informed policy making, not economics. I don't care if you're partisan or not, but whether you are a good economist. And if you support minimum wage laws in the belief that this will help those making low ages, which seek to overturn economic laws such as supply and demand, which operates on the pricing system, whether that system is real or artificial, you do not understand very basic economics, and as such are a very very bad economist.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
There is a minimum price for corn too. Dairy and eggs are other commodities that operate with strict market controls on price. Why? because it's catastrophic if the value of corn is less than it costs to produce it.
Never thought I'd see the day when PopeRatzo cheers for small businesses to be demolished by law in favor of big businesses who can afford occasional regionally high wages offset by lower wages in all other regions.
It's WaPoo. They are absolutely NON-biased about this shit. And UC-Berkeley couldn't study it's way out of a Gender Studies class without being triggered every 3 seconds.
Liberals. Most uneducated, half-wit, morally bankrupt so-called 'rational beings' on the fucking planet.
Pax Vobiscum
To me the problem with the study is that there is no alternative Seattle in which wages weren't increased, rather comparators selected to be similar, but there is a chance that some other factor unique to Seattle is in effect. With respect to that employment in multi site operations is relevant as it might be that mom and pop operations have simply lost business to the major players, that are also increasing automation.
Much of this criticism was actually covered in the paper. The complaints therefore seem overblown.
For example, here's footnote 14: "The Seattle Minimum Wage Study surveyed over 500 Seattle business owners immediately before and a year after the Ordinance went into effect. In April 2015, multi-site employers were more likely to report intentions to reduce hours of their minimum wage employees (34% versus 24%) and more likely to report intentions to reduce employment (33% versus 26%). A one-year follow-up survey revealed that multi location employers were more likely to report an actual reduction in full-time and part-time employees, with over half of multi-site respondents reporting a reduction in full-time employment (52%, against 45% for single-site firms)."
The paper excluded chain locations for a few reasons, including the issues of an employer with one foot in and one foot out of the affected region, but generally concludes that with reasons to suspect both effects on the exclusion of chains, "Our employment results may therefore be biased towards zero."
The paper itself: https://evans.uw.edu/sites/def...
Something like "for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple elegant and wrong".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And the data to show the conclusion they wanted to show. If raising wages causes unemployment then nobody would be working since we have been raising wages since the Great Depression.
Any "study" on a politcally charged subject is nearly guaranteed to be biased and rigged. It's way too much effort to find the very few that are not, so all such "studies," whether showing A, or not A, should be ignored.
500 employees is guaranteed $13.50 an hour, while a worker at a company with fewer than 500 employees is guaranteed only $11 an hour"
This means growing to the point of adding worker #500 will cost not 13.50/hour but 1250.00 per hour?
why not follow that to it's logical conclusion and drop everybody's wages to 1 cent/hr?
Yeah, I'm being facetious. But it's a core argument made by the other side (raise minimum wage to $200/hr!).
And yes, those studies are correct. They're correct because you'll see adults competing for jobs that only kids can hold right now. That's because only kids could make that little and survive. It's a minor thing since poor economic conditions forcing adults to take second jobs and increasing workload at school has forced most of them out of the job market anyway. It does, however, let you take their research out of context and make it look like raising the minimum wage hurts people that live off it; which is wrong.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm sure they already accounted for this, but the thing that struck me as I was listening to the explanations on the radio was that they considered low wage to be $19 and were no longer categorized as low wage.
Nullius in verba
So that businesses start charging more for products because the employees are making more just like when women entered the workforce and then the free market adjusted to account for their income and things started being valued higher to account for the wages being paid to the average home. Government setting labor wages is failsauce and has failed always and forever in a free market system, which system is where actual REAL wealth is created on this planet. Seattle already has experienced this failsauce and it was a big let down to the little Socialist dreamers, so we have to pretend they weren't wrong - cue Berkeley's fairy story. Everyone loves to badmouth Capitalism all the while riding its coattails into the future. Socialism is failsauce because you eventually run out of the wealth created by Capitalism. The finger wagging "do-gooders" wag their finger and do their fake "good" all while being buoyed up by the Capitalist, Free Market system. This has been a public service announcement.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
Imagine that.
IMHO, the definitions of small, medium, and large businesses is flawed. 500 people is a pretty big company. Companies with that many employees are likely generating a lot of revenue every year and probably have enough sway in the marketplace to pass higher minimum wages on to their customers. Companies with a few employees probably don't otherwise their would have plenty of work to justify hiring more people. And then, of course, will come the inevitable higher demands on the existing employees because the small companies can't afford to hire more people.
At it's heart, this is artificial market distortion and it will lead to inflation. There is no getting around that.
If they are TOO low, people won't want to work, they'll just be lazy and attempt to live off the government. But, anything to "achieve their socialist utopia" in the Sea-Tac area. Expensive to live their, expensive to eat their, expensive to work there.
there's too much competition for work. Mix in automation and there's even more. That's the trouble with Capitalism. It was thought up in a time of local craftsman. Adam Smith didn't see modern satellite based telecommunications coming.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Cool, so I guess this means that workers are no longer going to be replaced by computers. So thses articles must be fake news:
http://fortune.com/2016/11/18/mcdonalds-kiosks-table-service/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/11/29/thanks-to-fight-for-15-minimum-wage-mcdonalds-unveils-job-replacing-self-service-kiosks-nationwide/#22184bbc4fbc
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/mcdonalds-hits-all-time-high-as-wall-street-cheers-replacement-of-cashiers-with-kiosks.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-self-serve-kiosks-at-mcdonalds-mean-for-cashiers-2017-6
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/06/23/mcdonalds-fast-food-kiosks/423501001/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-23/mcdonalds-replacing-2500-human-cashiers-digital-kiosks-here-its-math
https://kioskindustry.org/mcdonalds-news-watch/
80% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. A McDonald's franchise costs millions and requires a proven track record of business. Even a bloody Subway costs over $100k and no bank will just give you that money.
Now, if my daddy left me millions of dollars to invest and millions more to live off of if those investments didn't pan out you'd have a point. But we can't all be Donald Trump.
Lastly what you believe has little to no bearing on what actually happens in reality. You're not free so long as somebody controls your access to food, shelter and healthcare. And you're not secure in your freedom if even 1/3 of the populace lacks that security. Sooner or latter some demagogue will come along, mobilize them and turn them against you. I've got 5 thousand years of demagogues to back me up on that assertion. Real freedom can only be had when the working class has solidarity and nobody gets left behind. Until then you're just waiting for the next round of gestapos, guillotines and gulags..
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
they capped CEO pay to something like 20x the lowest paid employee (can't remember the scale but it was pretty high). It worked great. If the CEO wanted more pay they had to pay better. Naturally the law didn't last long.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There are several countries with no minimum wage, hellholes like Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland.
paying people less money than it takes to live then you've broken the social contract between Job Creator and worker. If that contract is broken then I see no reason why the workers shouldn't take their own steps to fix it. And the sane thing to do is organize. There's Unions, but why stop there? If we're going to have a contract why should it be verbal only. Make it law.
/.tters like the sound of anarchy. It's not nearly as nice as it sounds. No AC, you get sick from the water and before you know it folks turn it into a dictatorship just to get the trains running on time.
That's what minimum wage is. It's codifying that social contract. It's saying: "If you can't run a business that pays people enough to live you have no business (sic) being in business". If we as a civilization can't pull that off what's left for us but anarchy? And yeah, I know a lot of
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The first time I used a grocery store in Ontario, it was nearly deserted. After checkout, the cashier and I both stared at my pile of groceries. I then realized I was expected to bag them myself. From that point on, when I find myself in Ontario I will only shop where there is a self checkout. Whoever is scanning the items is in the best position to bag them, cashiers who don't bag are completely unnecessary. Anything they would do, the one person watching 4 self checkouts can do just as well. Whatever union won that concession, won the battle but lost the war.
Most of the discussion requires restricting rights or taking something away from somebody and giving to something else. What is often forgotten is this is not a fixed sum equation. Our economy is dynamic and everyone can gain at the same time. Historically, you could get a good paying job without a college degree working the assembly line. Unfortunately, many of these jobs are being outsourced and/or automated. As a result, these blue collar jobs are being eliminated and nothing is coming in to replace them. A $15 an hour job at a restaurant will not provide a solution no matter how better it is compared to the $10 an hour minimum wage. What these "blue collar" people need are opportunities to find fulfulling and good paying jobs. Today there is a huge barrier to this -- the college degree. The time and expense of achieving this are either unobtainable or not a very good investment. Also, many are burdened with huge college related debts afterwards which effectively reduces their wage for many years. I don't often quote articles in the NY Times, but this one was right on and hits close to many of us on Slashdot. How about the "blue collar" coding/programming position. Have companies stop filtering by college degree and start filtering by abilities. Many non-degreed people become excellent programmers. As an experienced software developer I would love to take on interns who are committed, talented and hardworking people and help them learn my trade. They may not get paid as well as me with my formal degree, but they sure will get paid far more than they would at a minimum wage imposed restaurant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
Boeing has had internship openings for blue collar jobs. We should encourage other companies to encourage internships for non-college bound positions. Those of the non-libertarian persuasion may even consider subsidies and/or tax breaks for companies that promote these kinds of jobs.
The Left cannot let the truth be told about one of its sacred cows.
Those countries also have little niceties like free healthcare, child care - and probably subsidized housing. But who's counting...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Also, they usually get 6 weeks vacation to start.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
so it never occurred to them to have minimum wage laws. For all practical purposes they have minimum wage laws, they're just enforced by Unions (which are themselves quasi-government bodies in many countries).
Basically, they've achieved the same thing with a different set of laws. Government intervention was still necessary to prevent worker abuse. They just went about it a different way.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I was confused at these responses as well, its like we only read what conforms to our ideology.
Isn't freedom of association guaranteed in the Constitution? If I want to work for someone in Seattle for $12.00 an hour, the city government wants it to be illegal for me to do so? This country has fallen so low.
I find the places that expect you to bag yourself charges for plastic bags as well.
Which works fine for me - I bring my own (plastic) bags, so instead of advertising for them, I advertise for Walmart instead. OR since Safeway still gives free bags, I'll leave the non-Safeway grocery store advertising for Safeway.
OF course, I don't have kids or a spouse to help me out, and I shop for the week, so I have a few bags that I fill, which means if the cashier doesn't help me out, the next customer will be getting his stuff scanned and the cashier has to stop and wait for me because his stuff backed onto the scanner.
Can't rush me, I'm packing my goods using my own bags. Oh sure, the other customer can pack his stuff, but his stuff is right where the payment terminals are, so he's got to reach over, so even wife and kids are standing around waiting for me to pack my stuff.
At T&T Supermarket (Asian supermarket in western Canada), the cashiers DO help you - after you paid, they will pack your stuff in the bags while you sort yourself out to speed the line along. (You got to put cash back in your wallet and wallet back in pocket, etc, which can take a little time). So instead of the cashier looking around stupidly waiting for you to put your money away and your food into bags, they'll bag while they wait.
And they're scary fast - I was putting my money and coins away and by the time I was done, it was all neatly packed in bags.
Protip - never go in line with a single person who has a lot of groceries in a store with a pay-for-shopping-bags policy. Like me, they'll hold up the line packing their stuff away. If you see a spouse and kids hanging around, it's A-OK as they'll be packing while checkout is happening.
The charging for bags thing used to bother me until I realized what it actually was - a tax on the poor enacted by liberals. To me, a nickel a bag is as meaningless as the nickel deposit for bottles and cans - I make an effort to bring them back but no big deal if I can't. To someone who has to go without bread every week they need to buy a new pack of lightbulbs or whathaveyou, that nickel does have meaning. Those reusable cloth bags also have to be washed in order to keep bacteria and mold out of them (think of the stuff on the bottom of milk and other dairy containers, or the juices that leak out of meat packaging, or fruit/veggie bits that fall off). To me who has a washing machine in the other room, that's not a big deal. The person who has to lug their laundry out to a laundromat and pay every time, is not going to waste space in the machine on them. This makes the less fortunate less healthy. But the important thing is less plastic in landfills! Screw the poor!
Sheesh, how hard is it to bag yourself if it means the checkout process is quicker, and the queues shorter?
I've never had a supermarket cashier bag up for me, it's always been self-pack, and I've been going to supermarkets for 30 years. It really isn't a problem for anyone reasonable.
Any time someone wants to prove their point rather than work objectively as possible.
They sure are required to pay the new minimum wage in Ontario. Wait for the shit to hit the fan in a year and change and get back to me when businesses are shutting up shop.
Om, nomnomnom...
No, Ontario doesn't. You're paying out of pocket for a lot of stuff. If you're not carrying supplemental insurance like blue shield/green shield etc., you're probably going to go bankrupt if you're seriously injured. You are paying for your drugs and medications.
Strange that in the US they're required to cover the cost for people who aren't able to afford it though. And it's only been like that since the 1980's. Hey, fun thing. Did you know that 40% of people in Ontario who required medical care have gone to the US for treatment? Welcome to reality. It can be a very long wait when it's 90 days before seeing a specialist and another 180 days before you even start treatment for something. And you might wait as long as 300 days for cancer treatment or a bypass.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's pretty much expected in the no-name stores here. And the proliferation of no-name stores which sell things cheaper is a direct result of policies by the government where wages have remained stagnant, and costs have increased. If you live in the middle of a nice neighborhood in Toronto, you're likely not bagging your stuff. If you live in the middle of South-Western Ontario you likely are, and barely making ends meet to boot.
Om, nomnomnom...
Did you know that 40% of people in Ontario who required medical care have gone to the US for treatment?
Can you cite where that came from? I'm trying to look and the closest I found was that back in 2008, a survey found 43% of Ontarians would *consider* traveling for faster care for "certain services" (though I can't find what services exactly)
https://www.thestar.com/life/h...
Next, I'm not saying I believe every word, but it's easy to find a WaPo article trying to debunk Trump's remarks on how poor the Canadian system is. One part of the article also took shots at a study by the Fraser Institute that they estimate about 50k Canadians travel abroad for care, noting that 50k isn't a lot out of a population of 35 million.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Of course, if we take the Fraser report at face value, there could be even more Canadians than the 50k number going south (since the Fraser study could only investigate patients who sought care through their doctors, not those who arranged it privately themselves)
But digging further, I found another article posted on AARP.org, some non-partisan organization.
http://www.aarp.org/politics-s...
Some of the talking points in this last article I recall are featured on the Healthcare Triage youtube channel. Not working for that channel, but I like their videos.
Not in the 20 some years I have been lurking on here.
honestly.. I don't know about Ontario but here in Seattle the place is flooded with high wage earners. Places can and will raise prices to accommodate the wage increase and not one person will care one bit about it. When kids are leaving college and coming here for 120k per year starting no one cares if their beer is a buck more or their burger is 50 cents over the national. Seriously.
once more into the breach
In Ontario, the difference between living and surviving? If you're making $60k in Toronto you're not even making ends meet. If you're making $60k in Ingersoll, you're going to be well off. But large bumps in the minimum wage don't translate well to large geographic areas(cities to provinces/states). It's the small businesses that will shut up shop first, it will be the union shops that demand that they go from $24-26/hr to $38/hr to keep pace with the $10/hr to $15/hr jump in wages.
Om, nomnomnom...
Is fewer small businesses and more chain stores what Seattle wants? Cuz it's what they're getting.
If you had bothered to read the actual study, you would notice that the authors specifically addressed this deficit, and explained why they left it out of the analysis. SlashDot used to be a place where people would actually RTFA.